The Bird Of Chance Poem by Brian Taylor

Ever since Ancient Times,
when Sibyls plied their trade
in fortune telling by setting up shop
in caves and fissures
in the earthly form of Mother Gaia,
accurate prediction of the Future
has been at a premium.

Not nowadays do they do
as The Pythia did at Delphi,
sitting on a tripod
over a fissure in the earth
breathing in the noxious and narcotic fumes
that emanated from it.

Now they are more likely to be seen
hanging over three computers at once
at the Stock Exchange, where
breathing in noxious and narcotic fumes
has been banned;
and, despite the overwhelming victory
of political correctness,
they are unlikely to answer to the name of Sybil.
Or calculating the odds of racehorses.
Or the likely results of football matches.

Ever since the final flowering of Science
and its conquest of religion and astrology,
in the form of Little Boy on August 6,1945, *
it has been realised that prediction
depends on the accuracy
and comprehensiveness of the data
and the logical function of the organising mind.

But neither accuracy of data nor logic of mind
can form a basis for predicting a Chance Event.
Otherwise every one of the three coins
in the Fountain would be blessed.

Which number will win the Lottery?
Even the purely mathematical odds
against any number are purely decorative.

The whole structure of cause and effect
which unfolds as the net of our physical universe
is unable to catch the Bird of Chance
in its micromesh.

To predict a chance event,
all data and data-based logic is discarded
and upstreamed to the level of being
which still nevertheless operates
within the realm of adequate causes.
Every chance event has a cause
even if the human mind cannot foretell it,
just as every material thing has an odour
even if the human nose cannot smell it.
If you cannot predict the cause of an event,
create the cause yourself.

Withdraw from the thinking mind
to the level of creation.
This is upstream of even chance events
but still within the realm of cause and effect.
If you want to predict the unpredictable
you have to make it happen!


*Says Gnome: “Little Boy” was the codename for the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 by the Boeing B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay, piloted by Colonel Paul W. Tibbets, Jr.